Saturday, April 23, 2011

The rain finally stopped and the sun came out today for the first time in about week. Tonight's the first night we've been able to relax on the porch in the warmer weather. The breeze is refreshing and Harvey enjoys hanging out and barking at his friends as they stroll by on their leashes.

We completed the remaining homestudy visits on Wednesday. Our social worker interviewed us separately for about an hour each, going over our family history, childhood memories (both good and bad), and parenting methods we've seen and plan to use. She's a Christ follower and an expert in international adoption issues so these meetings have been invaluable. She's helped us sort through some of our own questions and concerns about some of the initial decisions we have to make before submitting our dossier. Simply knowing what age to request is a tough decision. Do you keep it wide open or do you specify a narrow range of age, gender, and disabilities? It's easy to get caught up in thinking that specifying is a selfish thing to do. We want to make the right decision, but not limit what God may have for us. At the same time we need to have a sense of what He wants for us in the big picture of our lives. Our social worker helped us formulate and organize our thoughts while providing counsel to us on this issue. Knowing that God put our social worker in our lives to give us guidance really helped us solidify our age request for the dossier. We are requesting a boy or girl up to 12months and will also consider a sibling group with the oldest being 3.

This week we also received word that our Ohio background clearances have been processed and are now at the adoption agency. This process usually takes 3 months, but ours were processed in only 2. Since the OH clearances are part of the critical path, I'm praying that this will cut a month off the total length of our adoption process.

Please remember to pray with us in this process. Specifically, we don't know if our child(ren) are born or where they are in the world, but God does. Our prayer is that He will orchestrate the events in His perfect plan to bring our family together.Stepping out on faith and doing what we believe God has designed for us is exciting and sometimes a little scary, but God keeps bringing us back to James 1 - asking Him for wisdom, believing Him when He gives it, and run with it full speed.

About Us

Sometimes plans initially considered "second-best" are actually what God intended for us in the first place. Follow along as we seek after God's best plan for us! Hopefully, you will be encouraged by this blog as we seek to raise awareness and hope for orphans as well as provide a practical resource to those who are considering adoption.